Though Resident Evil is often credited with starting the “survival horror” genre, old-school PC gamers will remember the true originator was Alone in the Dark from 1992. And unlike Resident Evil, Konami’s Silent Hill 3 has all the successful trademarks of that series – It’s a classic, exploration-heavy adventure game with plenty of tension, scares and splattered blood. It’s 3-D, but with strange camera angles that seemingly popup at the most inopportune times to lend extra tension to a scene.

The game puts you in the stylish shoes of the teenage-ish Heather, who’s appropriately pissy when dealing with adults and jaded enough not to freak out over the fact that her world just turned into a living nightmare. Silent Hill 3 is set in a lot of everyday locations – malls, subways, amusement parks, hospitals – that get a whole lot creepier when the nightmare world creeps in, turning everything into a horrific, decayed and bloody alternate reality crawling with eerie monsters.

You do all that good survival horror stuff when the nightmare world seeps in, which is always there in some form or another contorting reality. Weapons and resources are sparsely scattered throughout the world, odd flesh monsters stalk you and you’ll get to explore some of the most bizarre, horrific scenes ever coded into a computer game. It doesn’t quite approach Silent Hill 2’s level of morbidity as far as subject matter, but the game has its shockingly gruesome highlights ( anyone remember the scene with the dying fetus? ). Both monsters and environments are impeccably designed in evoking terror, so kudos to Japan for keeping things nice and twisted.

Although scary, most of SH3’s monsters are easy to dodge.

“Barbecued… dog?”

You see a lot of odd things in this game.

Back in Town

An occasional seemingly normal human character will popup to try and explain some sort of plot – why you’re there, why you’re important, and why there’s blood everywhere – but most of your understanding of it will hinge on whether you’ve played the first Silent Hill game (which was never released on the PC). The story and dialogue might therefore be more than a little incomprehensible for new players, but half of that craziness is what gives Silent Hill its bizarre edge. You don’t need to know the full story to appreciate Silent Hill 3, but it does add to the experience somewhat.

To its considerable credit, Konami didn’t just bring the PS2 version over to the PC. A thorough improvement over Silent Hill 2, this port has mouse support, remappable keys, it plays almost as well with the keyboard as a gamepad, and there are a number of high-level graphic options that make the game look absolutely stunning. In fact the game looks stunning everywhere, whether you’re in the nightmare or ‘normal’ world. And unlike the PS2 release, Konami added the ability to save anywhere instead of just at certain places marked by a special symbol.

There’s no logical reason for Silent Hill 3 to be as effective as it is. It’s a disjointed tale that’s hard to follow, yet it’s exactly that nonsensical quality that lends it a more hallucinatory feel. There are ambient sounds that creep you out, and special visual effects make scenes look grainy and distorted, greatly increasing the sense of dread. It’s all atmosphere and, particularly when you’re talking about horror, that’s more than enough.

So, I used the DL link and got a fucked-up RAR file with a password. Great! Ended up being subscription bait. So I figured paying the fee on my mobile network would be worth it, and used my own number, subscribed, and paid. Cool. No fucking password. So, please supply me with the password, before facing a plethora of criminal charges.

Ok dude. Here’s the thing. None of these files have a password. None of them need subscriptions. I have no idea what you (and several others) are talking about. You want me to make a video demonstrating how I download a file, extract, and don’t get a password error in WinRar?

Sorry dude. Turns out FireDrop was the culprit. If you get redirected to a torrent, don’t download it. Just refresh the FireDrop page, and try the download again. You should get the working REAR and not the false positive.

Everything seemed to go so fine till at the end of the installation, this goddamn file was missing. How irritating. Extracted all the 5 .nrgs but still it said something was missing. Do you have any idea what went wrong? And did it work for everyone else? Just want to play this game so hard now. At least it didnt seem to be any viruses and stuff in this, so positive.

Had this game for over 10 years. You’re doing something wrong or it just doesn’t work on your OS. Or you didn’t copy the crack… if it has one (i think it does). In any case, the game file is NOT the problem. I made the screenshots using it on my playthrough. I do that with 99% of the games you see here.

It seems the problem is something with there being sound3.cab both in nrg4 and nrg5 and that this installationshield cant somehow read both(?). If someone has some hint, i appreciate a lot. Or some other way to do it.

what about the sound_3 error?there are 2 files with this name and it needs both but only one works.i tried merging them but it won’t work.any ideas?(merged files where .CAB but it doesn’t recognize it)

I’m getting a wrong disc inserted error when trying to play the game, I’ve installed the game successfully and whatnot but it wants disc one, which IS mounted, along with all other discs, so I’m not sure how to fix this. Any suggestions

I fixed the Wrong Disc Inserted error, to play the game, you MUST run the game from the DEViANCE folder inside disc one (once installed properly), Inside the folder is the cracked SH3 application that allows the game to run. Thanks for the amazing download!